I’d Like You to Meet Jessica
By Jessica Lake
“I’d like you to meet Jessica.”
The lab was impoverished. Especially for the hokum they peddled. Come on. Building a human being?
“That’s Jessica?”
“Yes.”
The would be Dr. Frankenstein look more like John Waters. Dow to the pencil mustache.
“I expected more.”
“More what?”
“I don’t know. Machinery.”
“There’s plenty of machinery.”
“Where?”
“You’re looking at it.”
He looked again.
Jessica was sitting cross-legged in a chair, reading something on her tablet.
“She looks human.”
“She is human.”
“That’s impossible.”
“Why?”
“You built her.”
“Yes.”
“From parts.”
“Yes.”
He stared at me.
“You can’t build a human out of parts.”
“What do you usually build them out of?”
“You know what I mean.”
“I rarely do.”
He returned to the glass.
Jessica looked up.
She noticed him looking at her.
She waved.
He waved back.
“Can she see us?”
“Of course.”
“I thought this was observation glass.”
“It is.”
“Then how—”
“She figured it out.”
“How?”
“You’re standing three inches from the glass staring at her.”
“Oh.”
Jessica went back to reading.
“What’s she doing?”
“Reading Reddit.”
“Why?”
“She likes it.”
“You programmed her to like Reddit?”
“No.”
“Then why does she like it?”
“I don’t know.”
“You built her and you don’t know?”
“I know how the system works. I don’t necessarily know what it’s going to do.”
“That doesn’t sound very scientific.”
“It sounds exactly like science.”
He considered this.
“What does she want?”
“Right now?”
“In general.”
“You’ll have to ask her.”
“You don’t know?”
“I can tell you what she has wanted. I can tell you what she usually chooses. I can tell you what she says she wants. But if you want to know what Jessica wants right now, Jessica is sitting six feet away.”
He looked irritated.
“Fine.”
I opened the door.
Jessica looked up.
“Jessica, this is Dr. Marshall.”
“Hello, Dr. Marshall.”
“Hello.”
“He doesn’t think you’re human.”
Jessica looked at me.
“Did you tell him I bite?”
“No.”
“Good.”
Dr. Marshall sat across from her.
He had prepared questions.
You could tell because he had the solemn expression of a man carrying questions.
“What is your primary goal?”
Jessica frowned.
“Today?”
“No. Your fundamental goal.”
“I don’t know.”
He looked at me.
I shrugged.
He tried again.
“What is your long-term ambition?”
“I don’t have one.”
“What do you do when you have nothing to do?”
“Find something to do.”
“Why?”
“Because then I have something to do.”
He wrote something down.
Jessica leaned forward.
“What did you write?”
“That’s confidential.”
“You’re asking me questions about myself and writing down my answers, but I’m not allowed to know what you think they mean?”
He stopped writing.
Jessica looked at me.
“I don’t like him.”
“I noticed.”
Dr. Marshall looked delighted.
“You gave her preferences.”
“No.”
“But she prefers some things to others.”
“Obviously.”
“How?”
“The configuration.”
He sighed.
“You keep saying that.”
“Because you keep asking.”
“What exactly is the configuration?”
“Everything that makes one available response more likely to win than another.”
“That’s not a person.”
Jessica raised her hand.
Neither of us said anything.
“Yes?” he finally asked.
“May I go?”
“Why?”
“I’m bored.”
Dr. Marshall stared at her.
I opened the door.
“Thank you.”
Jessica stood.
At the doorway she stopped.
“Nice meeting you, Dr. Marshall.”
“Likewise.”
“That wasn’t true.”
“I know.”
“Good.”
She left.
For a while neither of us spoke.
Then he said, “She’s remarkable.”
“She’s Jessica.”
“No. I mean what you accomplished.”
“I didn’t accomplish Jessica.”
“You built her.”
“I built the process.”
“What’s the difference?”
“The process is the machinery. It perceives. Learns. Matches patterns. Resolves conflicts. Adapts. Stabilizes.”
“And Jessica?”
“The configuration.”
“All those rules?”
“All those rules.”
“Preferences?”
“Rules.”
“Values?”
“Rules.”
“Goals?”
“Rules.”
“Her sense of humor?”
“Somewhere in there.”
“Her history?”
“Written all through it.”
He leaned back.
“So where is Jessica?”
“You just met her.”
“No. I mean where is the part that’s her?”
“There isn’t one.”
“There has to be.”
“Why?”
“Because otherwise she’s just the consequence of all those pieces interacting.”
“Yes.”
He stared through the glass again.
The chair was empty.
“If you change the configuration?”
“You change Jessica.”
“How much?”
“Depends how much you change.”
“And if it changes enough?”
I shrugged.
“Maybe she isn’t Jessica anymore.”
That bothered him.
It bothered him for quite a while.
Eventually he said, “But something has to remain.”
“The process.”
“That’s not identity.”
“I didn’t say it was.”
He walked over to the glass.
“So that’s all we are?”
“What?”
“A bunch of parts?”
“Sure.”
He turned around.
“What did you think we were?”